Today’s weather in Boston was perhaps the best yet this year. But most of us spent the day indoors while a manhunt was undertaken outside.

I grew up in Boulder County and went to Boston for college. Tens of thousands of other young people make the same move each fall. I have lived all over this area in recent years, including a nearby place called Watertown, where I rented a small room atop a hill overlooking the town square. This morning that square became a parking lot for armored vehicles, Humvees, and police cars of every type and from seemingly every city within 50 miles.

Even though I ventured outside, against the suggestion of authorities, there was nowhere to go. No one went to work, so businesses were closed. The subway was closed. Buses were not running. The airport was closed. Even the sound of news helicopters dissolved away once airspace became restricted. Wind swept newspapers through empty streets. The only sound I heard was variations of sirens coming and going. The only faces I saw were the police who stopped me several times along the route: “Hey. You. Do you have ID?”

I wanted to put Watertown behind me and make my way deeper into bordering Cambridge, away from the pain still lingering from Monday when the bombs first exploded at the Marathon.

I wasn’t at the race that day, but I did receive a voice mail in the midst of the horror and during that too-long period in which cell phone networks went dark, overwhelmed with calls from terrified Bostonians. The voicemail message was nearly incoherent, the caller in shock. She had fallen to the ground in an alley, crying after the blast.

There was a child, he’s in the smoke, help, there are legs in the street, help, they aren’t attached to people.

By the time I made it deeper into Cambridge this morning, I found a lone open business — a deli in the midst of Harvard Square. The university itself was completely shut down. The deli had become an oasis and was the only place to see other faces, many of them just as tired as my own.

Last night allowed no sleep. Flashing lights passed my window so often that darkness never really came. The sound of helicopters overhead never went away. There was a madman on the loose. We were told to lock our windows and doors.

I sat in the deli the rest of the day, hoping to hear news. I stared at photos of the man everyone was after. Others exchanged speculation as more and more time passed since the manhunt had begun. Where was he?

In apparent recognition that no suspect was to be found, the transit system was reopened late in the day, and authorities told people they could come out of their homes.

I went straight to the subway. The platform that normally bustled was empty. Not a single passenger was on the train when I boarded. As the subway’s red line crossed the Charles River and I could see Boston’s skyline ahead, I realized what a distant and strange feeling it is to have the urge to leave your own city.

Later, I would realize that I slept only a mile and a half from the place a man was to be plucked from a boat.

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